Overview of news media phone hacking scandals

Phone hacking by news organizations became the subject of scandals that raised concerns about illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia between 1995 and 2012. The scandal had been simmering since 2002 but broke wide open in July 2011 with the disclosure that a murdered teenage girl's mobile phone had been hacked by a newspaper looking for a story. The scandals involved multiple organizations, and include the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal, the News International phone hacking scandal, the 2011 News Corporation scandals, and the Metropolitan Police role in the News International phone hacking scandal. By 2002, the practice of publications using private investigators to acquire confidential information was widespread in the United Kingdom, with some individuals using illegal methods. Information was allegedly acquired by accessing private voicemail accounts, hacking into computers, making false statements to officials to obtain confidential information, entrapment, blackmail, burglaries, theft of mobile phones and making payments to officials in exchange for confidential information. The kind of information acquired illegally included private communication, physical location of individuals, bank account records, medical records, phone bills, tax files, and organisational strategies. Individuals involved in the scandal included victims, perpetrators, investigators, solicitors, and responsible oversight officials. Victims of these illegal methods included celebrities, politicians, law enforcement officials, solicitors, and ordinary citizens. As this illegal activity became apparent, arrests were made and some convictions achieved. Upon learning their privacy had been violated, some victims retained solicitors and filed suit against news media companies and their agents, in some cases receiving substantial financial payments for violation of privacy. Successful suits and publicity from investigative news articles led to further disclosures, including the names of more victims, more documentary evidence of wrongdoing, admissions of wrongdoing, and related payments. Allegations were made of poor judgement evidence destruction, and coverup by news media executives and law enforcement officials. As a result, new investigations were initiated including some in the US and Australia, and several senior executives and police officials resigned. There were also significant commercial consequences of the scandal. There was evidence that illegal acquisition of confidential information continued at least into 2010. Solicitors representing victims were targeted for surveillance by a news media organisation being sued as recently as 2011. Illegal payments by news media agents to public officials continued into 2012.

Early investigations (1990s–2005) During this period, illegal acquisition of confidential information for developing news stories was widespread. News media journalists, editors and executives, along with private investigators, public officials, and police officers, all benefited from the practice. Little was done to inhibit it.

Victims

In 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by a paedophile. News of the World and its then editor, Rebekah Brooks (née Wade), championed the campaign led by Sarah's mother for legislation to notify parents if a child sex offender lived nearby. Brooks gave Sarah's mother a mobile phone to facilitate communication. The phone was subsequently hacked by an agent of News of the World. Six months later, Sir Paul McCartney left a voicemail message for his then girlfriend, Heather Mills, trying to work things out. Mirror Group journalists hacked the phone to listen in. Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror at the time, later acknowledged listening to it. When teenager Milly Dowler disappeared in 2002, agents of News of the World hacked into her mobile phone messages hoping to acquire information they could use for a story. Surrey police were reportedly advised of this hacking at the time, but no action was taken. Journalists working at News of the World after Andy Coulson became chief editor in 2003 claimed that Coulson talked freely about using the "dark arts," including phone hacking, and that "everybody knew. The office cat knew." There were thousands of phone hacking victims during this period from all walks of life. The Metropolitan Police Service and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) accumulated huge amounts of evidence that confidential information was being obtained illegally for use by news organisations including News Corporation's subsidiary News International (News of the World, The Sun, The Times), Mirror Group Newspapers (Daily Mirror), Express Newspapers (Daily Star, Daily Express), and others. But almost a decade was to pass before dogged investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper generated public outrage over the invasions of privacy that had been covered up through wilful blindness, intimidation, and suppression of evidence by news organisations, law enforcement organisations, and politicians. During 2003 and 2004 in the United States, someone at News Corporation's advertising subsidiary, News America Marketing, repeatedly hacked into a computer at rival FLOORgraphics to obtain confidential product and contract information with which to put FLOORgraphics at a disadvantage in a brutal competitive battle. The FBI initiated an investigation, but little effort was put into it. In 2006 an editor of News of the World reportedly hacked into the computer of a British Army intelligence officer in Northern Ireland who had responsibility for contact with an agent embedded in the Provisional IRA and potentially at high risk for assassination if his whereabouts became known. Again, law enforcement officials did little to investigate the charges at the time. Before public outrage forced rigorous investigations, evidence that several thousand UK citizens including celebrities, Members of Parliament, murder victims, their relatives, or anyone else who happened to be nearby, had been victims of phone hacking remained for many years consigned unexamined by officers of the Metropolitan Police Service to storage in garbage bags in the bowels of New Scotland Yard.

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